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The Pandora Story Part 1

Introduction

We all know how often Greek mythology makes its way into pop culture and consumerism. A similar story is that of Pandora’s box. Pandora is known as the first mortal woman, and in her possession was a cursed box that held misery, poverty and disease. However, despite its negativity, the last gift that escaped the box was hope. In 1982, a goldsmith in Copenhagen, Denmark, Per Enevoldsen and his wife Winnie opened a local jewelry shop which then expanded into a global empire – Pandora.

From its solid sterling silver ring manufactured in Thailand in 1989, to over 2700 stores globally, Pandora is a force to be reckoned with. The brand is often synonymous with its charm bracelet that allows for personalization and self-expression of women. In 2016, they released their rose gold collection. 

But don’t be fooled, everything is not coming up pink and roses! In 2018, there was a fear that Pandora’s charms were out of fashion! Oh no, right? They’re literally and figuratively its most charming asset. This year, they decided to step up their game. They re-launched the brand on August 29, 2019 by painting the streets of LA pink. #WhatDoYouLove Pandora asked their audience in the groundswell. 

Pandora, like most similar companies performs best around November-December. I believe it is around the time of the Black Friday sales and of course, Christmas. Pandora re-branded just before the Black Friday and Christmas season. 
There is also a spike around Valentine's Day and in May, probably graduation season. That's speculation, though. 

A sneak peek into their social media 

1. Instagram 

Pandora understands that a big part of their groundswell lives on Instagram. So they're currently focusing their energies on letting their brand colors and new brand identity manifest on Instagram. Interestingly enough, they have 7.2 million followers on Instagram, which is less than half of the likes they have on Facebook.

They also use the visually aesthetic grid to enhance the images. 

2. Facebook 

Pandora USA's Facebook is very consistent with its new brand colors. I think Pandora's biggest social media following is on Facebook, with 15.6 million likes. Now it makes sense to see how Pandora really focuses their effort on making Facebook Posts that are interactive and engaging. 

Additionally, Pandora has also been using Facebook to promote a series of events. From Houston to Atlanta to Miami Beach to San Francisco, Pandora has been encouraging their audiences to discover Pandora Me by attending these events. 

3. Twitter 

You can also catch Pandora updates on their Twitter page. The Pandora North America Twitter page ensures to update their audience about products, promotions, etc. Their Twitter is actually divided between Pandora USA and Pandora UK (I don't get why, they should just put it all together). Their Pandora North America twitter has 106k followers. 

4. Website 

The Pandora website is built to be user-friendly and accessible. In my opinion, their most interactive feature is the drop down bar. It features all of their products divided in categories, so they can be found easily. Additionally, it also shows off their signature product, the charm bracelet! 

5. Youtube 

A Youtube channel is not a platform that drives a lot of customers, but in today's day and age, it is definitely useful to have one. Brands love posting HD quality videos of their new launches, their campaigns and basically, what they are going. Besides, who knows when something can go viral! Pandora has 73.8k subscribers on Youtube, it's not a lot, but it's a great start! 

Celebrity Partnerships 

Partnerships with celebrities is a way to energize the groundswell. Pandora has partnered with Colombian pop icon Shakira earlier and their latest brand ambassador is the very well known Millie Bobby Brown. 

In fact, one of Pandora's followers asked who Millie is and they responded. 

Disney and Warner Brothers 

If we have learned anything, it should be that interacting with the Groundswell is complex, it involves listening, responding and most of all, embracing the groundswell. Pandora exhibits this in their partnerships: their Disney and Harry Potter themed jewelry. Their Disney collection includes Pixar, The Lion King and Disney Princesses among others. 

In fact, their Harry Potter collection has not even come out yet, but you can see that people are pumped. Bustle and Mental Floss have written interactive posts about it too! 

Here's what Pandora said: 

With their pink re-branding that encouraged self expression, making Millie the face of the brand and the much anticipated Harry Potter collection, Pandora is definitely on a mission to make a comeback! 

Statistics: Let's get analyzing!

Competitor analysis 

With a product like jewelry, competitors play a big role. Pandora's biggest competitors are Tiffany and Co., and Cartier this how they performed in comparison to them. 

Pandora and Tiffany and Co., seem to have similar trend patterns. Pandora would really to identify something that differentiates the brand. 

A surge of activity! 

Pandora re-branded and re-launched in the end of August. Following that we can see a rise in activity and interaction on Facebook. This is what Social Bakers data compiled. 

Where are the Pandora enthusiasts located? 

We cannot even begin to describe the worldwide reach of Pandora. They opened store in Copenhagen, started manufacturing in Thailand and opened their first concept store in Hamburg. So, yes, it's safe to say that Pandora has sparked interest in geographic regions all over the world. Something unexpected, according to Google Trends, Pandora's biggest social following is in...

*insert dramatic drum roll* 

Puerto Rico. 

And then Italy and Romania. 

How can Pandora spark the same interest in the United States? 

Conclusion

Since it began in 1982, Pandora has seen unbelievable growth. From just one sterling silver ring to new products and collaborations every day, this is a brand that is definitely in touch with its groundswell following. However, the question arises, has Pandora attempted to grow too fast? Pandora needs to find the balance between its global influence and its need to connect with the consumers. 

We can see traces of listening to the groundswell in its latest re-branding effort. 

We will discuss more about Pandora's identity and its nuances in the next part of the Pandora Story! Tune back in to Simrants (Social Media Edition) to know more. 

I will leave you with one question: 

#WhatDoYouLove ? 

The Groundswell and KLM Airlines Take Off

Conversations with strangers across the world? In real time? In the form of a holograph? Sign me up! KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has revolutionized the idea of embracing the groundswell. "Make the customers an integral part of the way you innovate", suggest Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book (p. 183) KLM  encourages people waiting in airports around the globe to have meaningful conversations with each other. They share travel and culture stories holographically. Isn't that the coolest thing? Check it out!

The age of Donald Draper's sleek catchlines is no more. We cannot stress this enough. "The internal groundswell is all about creating new ways for people to connect and work together" (p. 226) the book elucidates in the light of case studies like Bell Canada and Blue Shirt Nation. But don't be fooled, every company adopts its own unique strategy. Coercion from the skyscrapers of Madison Avenue is the marketing of yesteryear.
Can we assume this is how Don Draper will react?



In the age where the groundswell is growing by the minute, every brand should be ready for a transformation. No one can escape it. There is no formula for thriving in the groundswell but Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff keep reminding us, "It's about relationships, not technology"

Five steps we can follow for success (p. 212)

• Start small: We need to pick our battles strategically! 
• Educate our executives: Let's make everyone use the technologies themselves. Perhaps an internal blog? For the summer, I interned at the advertising agency Sunny Side Up in India and found that they use innovative project management technologies like Basecamp and Monday to bring employees across cities together on various tasks. They're actually fun to explore. 
• Who runs the strategy: Yes, it makes a difference to choose people who really have a passion to make a difference for the company! 
• Agency and technology partners working together: Both need to invest time and resources 
• Long term plans: Let's ask, what's our plan for the next step? 

How much more can we grow and transform in the groundswell? Like Lindsay Lohan and Cady Heron says...

Yes, you know it! It's an infinite realm of possibilities out there! And brands are just getting starting. Unilever's real beauty Dove campaign and Salesforce's IdeaExchange are two prominent examples among thousands of others. 

KLM Dutch Airlines has definitely "taken off" with the groundswell. They have embraced the groundswell in creative ways. Aside from their idea to connect people in airports through holographs, they also used a great activation idea to raise awareness of their airline in Germany. 46% of the people they asked didn't know what it was. 

"ein Restaurant" or "eine Bank" or even "ein Radiosender" were the responses they received. So, they simply transformed into what people thought they were. Whether KLM food served like a restaurant, KLM flight tickets in ATM machines and KLM music, no one can forget that they really are an airline! 

See for yourself: 

We live in a world that is turned inside out by the groundswell mentality. "When the groundswell surrounds you like a cocoon," say the authors of our textbook (p. 235) "When you breath it like air and depend on it always, the world will feel very different." 

Meanwhile, let's ask companies how they're doing in the groundswell and most will say this...

Thank you loyal readers, for tuning in to this week's update on Simrants: Social Media Edition. It has been great sharing my penny's worth with you. 

Branding is in your Hans (Brinker)

Why have services like Yelp, Four Square and Trip Advisor gained popularity? Yes, it’s because in today’s world, we are surrounded by groundswell thinking. The everyday person’s opinion actually matters. A very interesting case, the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam leveraged bad reviews and the fact that they were voted worst hotel. Consequently, they were able to make humorous ads that worked to their advantage. Below are two hilarious examples of their digital campaign. 

There is so much you can do with satire in the world of digital advertising. Using satire, dark humor and puns is an interesting strategy. This can also be another attempt to make things go viral, if you remember my last original post that attempted to analyze a science behind viral content. Guess what the deduction was, it's not a science at all! Brands try different techniques and strategies every day and satire is one of them. Meanwhile, the internet is like... 

Johnna Gattinella tried this hilarious fake ad experiment on Craigslist. She posted a photo of her tattoo that said “Roy” and said she’s searching for a man named Roy and she documented the mock-worthy responses. You can read all about it on the NY Times article (it’s actually from 2007!). She’s a pretty humorous woman herself. She ends the article by saying “I don’t want to be forever banned from Craigslist. That would be terrible. I still have a lawn mower I need to get rid of”. So where do we draw the line between parody and fake news? 

There also brings up an interesting topic, censorship in the age of the groundswell. I read this really interesting quote on another NY Times article. In fact, it caught my interest because it is titled The End of Satire. It is an opinion piece that details how social media is resplendent with “toxic disinformation” and as a result, there’s a question whether traditional forms of humor are now futile. “One person’s satire is another person’s propaganda”. So, while social media and other digital technologies has expanded the blogosphere and made sharing so much easier, do we still see censorship? 

An obvious example is the French magazine Charlie Hebdo that published controversial cartoons of Muhammad and was targeted in two terrorist attacks, in 2011 and 2015. The cover you see above has been one of much conversation and debate. “All is forgiven” it said, which leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. L.V. Anderson wrote an article on Slate about it if you want more information. 

Anyway, the crux of the matter is that in the past, we would see a one-to-many form of communication. It was all about mass media. Communication has fundamentally changed in the age of the groundswell with communication. We now live in a many-to-many realm of communication where everyone tries to get their voice heard. It’s a tough world out here.  

Like it’s said in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, it’s not about “shouting”, it’s more about knowing the strategy to talk to the groundswell. Marketing is literally in your Hans (Brinker)! It’s also exciting as we meander through this labyrinth of new age digital marketing. If you found those Hans Brinker ads in the beginning funning, you’re in for a treat. Buzzfeed has a list of the hilarious Hans Brinker hotel ads. Click here to enjoy the whole gamut of self-deprecating humor. 

As always, thank you for taking the time to tune into this week’s update on Simrants: Social Media Edition. 

Try not to get sucked into the black hole of satire, keep it real!
Hope you are having the best day,
Simran

True Groundswell Energy, This Coke is a Fanta

Have you heard derogatory terms to refer to people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community? In USA, a common term is “They play for the other team”. It is subtle, but definitely hurtful! In Brazil, the term is This Coke is a Fanta. Based on this, Coke started a campaign that definitely energized the groundswell. They began to fill Fanta into Coke cans. Soon, people were sharing, making their own Coke bottles with Fanta and there was even fake merchandise! Check out this incredible groundswell phenomenon.

According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book (Chapter 7), a technique to energize enthusiasts is to create a community. David the Agency (who started the That Coke is a Fanta Campaign) used an even cleverer technique, they marketed to a passionate community that already exists, the LGBTQ+ community. 

We have read various case studies about tapping into the groundswell. Like HP used the blogosphere to reach out to their client and eBags tracked their reviews and ratings to improve their customers’ experience, more organizations are looking to get into the minds of the customers and give them exactly what they need. The first step to this is going back to the Social Technographics profile. It’s finding where your target audience is. And being there. It’s also about analyzing which stage of the marketing funnel your audience is on. 

This image shows a simple view of the marketing funnel and how to bring customers into the funnel. Then the strategy depends on which part of the funnel they are in. According to the book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, there can be four possible problems

·     An awareness problem: The right people don’t know! 

·     Word-of-Mouth problem: People need to converse with each other about the brand 

·     Complexity problem: The marketing message might be too difficult to understand 

·     Accessibility problem: The right people can’t be reached at all!  

So, yes, it means really probing into who your audience is, where you can find them and how you can build your strategy. Meanwhile, your audience is like... 

Let’s look at a recent example that people have been talking about. Yes, it’s about Forever 21 declaring bankruptcy. In the early 2000s, Forever 21 was all the rage. Why did that change? It’s because, there has been a fundamental shift in the priorities of young shoppers. Deciding to close around 350 stores worldwide, Forever 21 will really have to focus on listening to the groundswell. The Washington Post breaks down the priorities of young shoppers in this article. It’s all about sustainability and “fast fashion” of the past is no longer the buzz (“Understand how the buzz is shifting”, the book advises). 

According to Charline Li and Josh Bernoff, “Listening is likely to change the power structure of your organization. That’s incredibly interesting, because the entire dynamic of Forever 21 is about to change! They need to really hone in people’s skepticism towards clothing that have a short life span and have adverse effects on the environment. 

Anyway, this portion of our reading delved deep into creating a groundswell strategy. Right from listening to the groundswell, talking (as opposed to shouting), energizing the groundswell and helping it support itself. 

Something interesting to end on, whenever I'm not having a best day, my roommate always says "Trust the process" (Thanks Sarah!) and I think this so aptly applies to the groundswell phenomenon as well as our lives. 

As always, thank you, readers, for checking out this week's update on Simrants: Social Media Edition. 

The Science Behind Viral Challenges

Do you remember being 10 years old and pretending to enjoy something you definitely didn’t? This is Buzzfeed’s hilarious list of most overrated things in the world (I am personally triggered by the fact that they claim bacon is overrated, but oh well) 

One thing that has become even more popular with the rising of the groundswell, is viral content. Social media has made sharing easier than ever before. So, this can also bring out our competitive side. It’s a cause for concern when this competitive side becomes dangerous. The most popular one that comes to most of our minds is the Blue Whale Challenge. It was a mysterious challenge that went viral on Social Media and was responsible for numerous deaths all over the world. Here is BBC’s in-depth analysis of this strange suicide game that was prevalent in Russia, Ukraine, United states and India. 

However, there are also some challenges that were started for a social cause. The most popular one here is the Ice Bucket Challenge. People would tag their friends and challenge them to pour a bucket of ice over themselves to spread awareness about Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Even though lot of people did it for the trend, but it definitely raised some awareness. 

While there is the good side and the bad side to viral challenges, there are also some harmless challenges that are purely for fun. An example is the Mannequin Challenge. It became a fun challenge where people would film their friends frozen and play the song Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd. Things like this really make me wonder what the science behind all of this is. How do challenges take off and become viral? 

Let’s go into the psychology of it all. Why do we choose to follow some of these challenge trends? Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs and this had an immense influence on other psychologists. He explains how after Physiological and safety and security needs, the next most important need is love and belonging. In fact, in this Thought Co. article two psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary proposed love and belonging to be a fundamental need because lack of it can have an adverse effect on health. 

Let's go back to the subject in question, we humans see something that appears to be a trend and we follow it to fit in. This is how viral content works. It's so unpredictable as to what can go viral. Rebecca Black's teenage music video experiment or even a loop of a pop tart cat with a catchy tune. There is no formula to it. That's the most exciting part, though! Thanks to the internet, we can wake up tomorrow fully expecting a new song/challenge/random video to be blowing up our social media. 

Maybe most of these things are overrated (like Buzzfeed suggested the Mona Lisa, lobster, twerking among others!) 

With all this clutter, make sure to stay focused and most importantly stay away from the dangerous challenges. Keep it real, #fam 

Thank you for tuning in to this week's post on Simrants (Social Media Edition) 

Let me know in the comments which is your favorite (or least favorite) viral challenge or viral video? 

The Groundswell, Spilling the (Chai) Tea (Latte)

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, from Forrester Research, immaculately bring out the nuances of the groundswell. In chapter 1, they emphasize that the world has changed due to social technologies and it is an irreversible change. “It’s a completely different way for people to relate to companies and each other”. Still #shook from the paradigm shift? Keep reading to delve deeper into the groundswell phenomenon.

There is no escaping the groundswell. In chapter 3, we see the diagram of the Social Technographics Profiles – how we are all part of the groundswell ladder. We belong to one of the groups (in fact, the text mentions how a consumer only needs to participate in one of the activities at least monthly and they’re part of the group) 

To understand the groundswell in context, let’s #SpillTheTea or spill the Iced Chai Tea Latte with soymilk, extra ice, no sugar, two (and a half) pumps of vanilla. Or a Trenta, no foam, 5 shot, half calf, no foam, pumpkin spice latte with no foam at 210 degrees. 

I mean, let’s look at the text in relation with a very popular example – Starbucks. According to the authors, “You cannot ignore this trend. You cannot sit this one out. The groundswell trend is unstoppable, and your customers are there”. Interestingly, this article on The Wise Marketer explains how Starbucks decided last year to build relationships with customers who are not part of Starbucks Rewards. And this, in turn, increased the membership to Starbucks rewards, by 11%, pretty smart, huh? According to the text, it’s the perfect way to embrace customers or integrate them into the way business works. 

Also, check out their #MorningYes Campaign video (only 30 seconds, but worth a watch) 

No matter how overwhelming the groundswell may seem, it’s crucial to understand it. Our authors tell us how the only way to thrive in it is to develop an understanding of how it works. A metaphor that I found to be very apt was of jujitsu and how in this martial arts form, we really have to know how bodies move. In the case of the groundswell, "concentrate on the relationships and not the technologies", we will have mastered groundswell thinking. And we will have gotten a step closer to world domination, sounds like a win-win to me. 

The acronym POST conceptualizes the process to tap into the groundswell: 

·     Access your customers’ social activities 

·     Decide what you want to accomplish 

·     Plan how your relationship will evolve

·     Decide which technologies to use 

There you go, you are a groundswell expert now! Go and thrive in the socially connected world. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff acknowledge that things will go wrong. But this is what they say to that; “Go back to POST, because diagnosing how something is going wrong is the first step to fixing it”

Thank you for tuning into this week’s update on Simrants (Social Media Edition) 

As always, hope you all are having the best day!

Simran